“Perhaps you think so, but I assure you that you are mistaken. If he had acted like a gentleman that day he accompanied us to Hastings’ on the Pimlico Road all would have been well.”
“‘If he had acted like a gentleman!’” Once more she quoted his words. “Frank Merriwell always acts like a gentleman. It is natural for him.”
“I presume you think so, but the fellows in that party universally agreed that he behaved like a cad. Why, he pretended to drink with us, but he took water instead of gin.”
“He told you at the start that he did not drink, but you insisted. You tried to force it upon him. Why? Because you had arranged a miserable scheme to make him ridiculous. You hoped to get him full and then to pit him against a prize fighter and a slugger. You thought you were fooling him, but he fooled you. That is why you say he did not act like a gentleman. Shame on you, Fred Fillmore! It was you who behaved like anything other than a gentleman.”
She was aroused and he was beginning to feel the sting of her scorn.
But, strange as it seems, he liked it!
Why?
Because, with her cheeks flushed and her eyes flashing indignation, she was far handsomer than ever before in his eyes, and he had thought her the handsomest girl in all the world. He felt his blood taking fire as she stood before him glowing with indignation in her defense of Frank.
“I don’t blame you for thinking that,” he said. “Of course he told you anything he pleased, and you believed him.”
“He never told a lie in all his life!”